This specification relates to assisting participation in a social network.
A social network is a social structure that represents individuals (or groups of individuals) as nodes and the relationships between those individuals as links between the nodes. A social network can be implemented as a member network that is available on the Internet, such as FACEBOOK, LINKEDIN, MYSPACE, and TWITTER. Member networks generally allow members to create a “profile” of information to represent themselves in the social network. Member networks also allow members to interact socially with other members, e.g., by exchanging messages and publishing content that is associated with their profile.
In a symmetric social network, related members necessarily share the same relationship with one another. Examples of such symmetric social networks include FACEBOOK, LINKEDIN, and MYSPACE, where two or more members establish bi-directionally equivalent “friend” or other relationships generally using an invitation/response protocol that effectively requires the consent of both members to the relationship. Such bi-directionally equivalent relationships provide the same social interaction possibilities to the related members.
In an asymmetric social network, a first member's relationship to a second member is not necessarily the same as the second member's relationship to the first member. Since the character of the social interaction between members in a member network can be defined in accordance with the nature of the relationship between those members, a first member in an asymmetric social network may interact with a second member in ways that differ from the social interaction provided for the second member to interact with the first member. An example of such an asymmetric social network is TWITTER, where a first member may be a follower of a second member without the second member necessarily being a follower of the first. Indeed, in many asymmetric social networks, a second member need not even know a first member's identity even though the first member has a relationship to the second member.